The Soda Factory – Surry Hills

Lovely Tuesday night, Dollar Dogs night. $1 per hot dog! How awesome is that? With drinks purchase of course. But hey, we all need drinks.

We were given an address: 16 Wentworth Ave, but when we rocked up to the spot, this is what we see.

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Where’s the door? Right behind here of course. Surprise surprise.

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Only a tiny sign above the 2nd door tells you that you are in the right place. Very discrete, how awesome is that? Love little details like that.

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When you walk in, it’s all busy, and there’s people everywhere. You pick a spot at one of the tables, or ask to share a table.

The bar is always busy. Pick up a menu, and order away! You order and pay at the bar.

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Plenty of alcohol in the bar.

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We ordered the “Caramel Candy” in soda syphons. It’s a shared cocktail, supposedly a 4 serve, but it was so yum, I’m sure I could have finish 1/2 all on my own. But shared it nevertheless. Sobering moment for me, to actually think I am able to finish a 4 serve cocktail on my own. I think it’s time to say “I think I have a problem”. It was really yum, and I only had a glass! One glass! Just 1 tiny glass, barely full, cause it was split 5 ways instead of 4.

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You get a metal bottle, “soda syphons” as it’s called, and you depress the plunger, and out comes a stream of cocktail soda! How awesome is that? It was fun, playing around with it. Of course I had no idea how to operate one of those canisters, had to get help.

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It’s Tuesday, so it’s $1 hot dog day! All hotdogs for $1 each (except a couple of fancy ones, that’s $2). It’s usually $10 a dog. I’m not sure if the usual dogs are larger, the $1 is smallish in size. I only needed 1 hotdog, as we ordered a ton of sides. But I suppose you can go all out, and order one of each of the $1 dogs, and it will barely make a dent in your wallet.

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Here are the dogs! This is the Texas redneck. A spicy dog, with smoked chilli, cheese and BBQ sauce on a pork sausage. Way to kick things up a notch, you spicy spicy little dog.

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The Yoko Ono. One of the $2 dogs. It’s the “original hipster” dog, a veggie dog with avocado, tomatoes, lettuce and cheese. Not a fan of vege dogs. I like my food filled with meat. But this sure is a pretty one, with all the colours and such.

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I have no idea which dog this is. We’ve ordered 8 dogs for 5 people, and only managed 1 dog a person, the only guy at the table ate 3. Probably buffalo bill. Too many dogs! All I remembered was waitresses milling around, asking for the baskets back, because they were out of baskets for the dogs.

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Last but not least, The Frank Sinatra. Easily identified by the crispy onion rings on top of them. Beef and pork sausage with sauerkraut, pickles, mustard and crispy onion rings.

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On to the sides! Wonderful wonderful sides. No meal is complete without sides!

First up, it’s a basket full of crispy onion rings. Batter looks puffy, but it’s the right amount of batter, at least for me it is. The onions are sweet and cooked through. None of those crazy, slightly “raw” crunch, just the crunch of the batter, and sweet and tender onion rings on the inside. And the side of mayo dipping sauce didn’t hurt, made things great and excellent.

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Next up is the fries. I wanted sweet potato fries, and my friend wanted regular fries. So we compromised and got shoestring fries. Sounds like the perfect relationship, no? Good fries. Very “fries-like”. It’s fries, really. I can’t quite imagine bad shoestring fries. Oh, it’s not over salted at all, so that probably what perfect fries should be.

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And a box of mac and cheese. I think I’m too used to the “easy mac and cheese” or “crap and cheese”, and I’m used to the overly flavourful and processed cheesy flavour, so this is considerably bland, and something I’m not quite used to. It sure is decent mac but a stronger tasting cheese might be better?

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Ended the night with more cocktails. Fantastic evening.

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Next time, I’m trying the lobster rolls, or fried chicken with waffles and maple syrup.

What am I? What is this?

Hi! I'm Invidiaz, (aka: Charlene) a not-so-little little food blogger living in Sydney. Loves eating around or domesticating myself around the house spending lots of quality time with my KitchenAid and oven. It is known that you will never starve if you are with me!

Sundays are made for sundaes as well as target archery. I shoot a compound bow -
Mathews Chill SDX with pink gold tip arrows at
the Sydney Bowmen Club Sundays only,
Latham Park - Moverly Rd at South Coogee.
Would love to see more people there!